Question

Determine the place value (weight) of each digit in a five-digit number in base-8 (octal).2. Use your results for the previous problem to convert the octal number 4718 to decimal.

Answer 1

In octal, the digit values go from 0 to 7. The octal place values, from left to right, are as follows.

$\begin{gathered} 8^0=1 \\ 8^1=8 \\ 8^2=64 \\ 8^3=512 \\ 8^4=4096 \\ 8^5=32768 \end{gathered}$

Since one of the digits in 4718 is greater than 7, then 4718 is not an octal number. Thus, the number cannot be converted to decimal.